battlezonefandomcom-20200214-history
Bugs
As indicated by the fact that the patch cycle for both Battlezone games is still in progress, both Battlezone and Battlezone II have suffered a significant amount of issues during their lifetime. Battlezone Bugs East-West Line Bug :Any projectile fired on a unit facing exactly east or west from ranges of 30m or greater would cause no damage. From the targeted player's perspective, the shot would miss; from the shooter's perspective, it would hit but deal no damage. This issue was fixed in 1.5. FPS Bug :Framerates above 60Hz would cause the game tick rate to accelerate by a rate of ~1% per 10Hz. Due to the way the game's networking code worked, this caused issues in multiworld with one player's simulation working at a faster rate than their opponents. Exploitation of this issue became a serious issue, with several players accused of cheating. During 1.4, the accepted workaround was to use VSync to lock the game to 60Hz, but the FPS bug was finally fixed in 1.5. :Framerates of below 5Hz cause the reverse to occur, though this is both rare and hard to spot. Silo Bug : When one of a group of allied players had constructed a Silo, Scavengers belonging to allied players would attempt to deposit their scrap there if it was closer than one on their own team, causing scrap to disappear. This issue was traditionally worked around until a solution was presented by 1.5. Hardpoint Bug :When controlled by the AI in a multiplayer environment, the Czar, Grendel and Stoli would be unable to fire some weapons as their hardpoints were incorrectly located - often at the rear of the vehicle. The Stoli was the most heavily affected as its primary cannon hardpoint was poorly placed and it was left completely unable to fire, though due to the Stoli's relative scarcity in Strategy this occurance of the bug was only seen rarely. The Czar's secondary cannon was similarly rendered unusable, though this only became apparent when the cannon was upgraded in a manner that caused the AI to use it - as the Czar is commonly supplied an SP-Stabber field upgrade this occurred relatively frequently, but due to the individual nature of these upgrades it went largely unnoticed. The third affected vehicle, the Grendel, went entirely unnoticed as its cannon is not used by the AI under any circumstances. :After the hardpoint bug's eventual discovery in 2008, a fan-made model fix was developed and deployed privately to users of the battlezone1.net installer five months later. The 1.5 Patch later provided a proper fix.HP bug (Stoli bug) on battlezone1.org Hostile-Neutral Bug on The Playground]] :The hostile-neutral bug, introduced by 1.3 at the latest, renders units on Team 0 hostile to all other teams where they should in fact remain neutral. It is likely an unintended side-effect of a deliberate change to prevent teams from attacking artefacts and relics while still allowing neutral mines to function. :Without custom assets this can only be seen under very specific circumstances on The Playground; an empty tank must be left by the neutral CCA Barracks in the northern base and the barracks destroyed once a pilot has hopped out without harming the pilot, then the tank shunted onto the pilot using either its residual momentum or an impact from another source. As this is very unlikely to happen unless deliberately caused the bug was never actually fixed, but the remains of a hack used to prevent the pilot from commandeering the empty tank can be seen as the pilot will make no move towards it (and will instead fall inside the barracks' collision, necessitating its destruction in order to reproduce the bug).Battlezone (1998) :As the hostile-neutral bug can only appear in the unmodified game under very specific circumstances and may be exploited by some Instant Action missions, the 1.5 Patch does not intend to restore the intended functionality.(NOT A BUG) ATTACK OF THE NEUTRAL UNITS on battlezone1.org Excess Unit Exploit :Prior to 1.5 the unit-per-category limit was not fully enforced, allowing players to exploit this bug to gain a potentially unlimited number of units. This could be done by taking personal command of the tenth unit in the menu and building an replacement, then driving the former tenth unit to a barracks or pilot. This old tenth unit would thus become an eleventh and the bug could be repeated ad infinitum. Units outside the first ten would not be commandable, meaning this exploit was more useful for Scavengers and units suited to autonomous defensive tasks than offensive units. 1.5 resolved the bug by forcing any surplus eleventh unit back into the tenth slot as soon as it became available. Battlezone II Bugs "Flight" : It was possible to overcome the game's approximation of gravity by nosing down from a sufficient height and reversing; this typically worked best in Thunderbolts and Jackals and was one of the main factors leading to the prevalence of the ISDF in multiplayer. Once in the air, skilled players could use this bug to arc their vehicle across the map and rain fire down from above; AI units were unable to aim high enough to take down a flying player, so the only counter was another player. When 1.3pb1 resolved the issue, the community became divided and a huge amount of players refused to upgrade from 1.2. Arguments over the issue continued for as much as five years and the resulting animosity is still present today. Joining AI Team : In 1.2 and earlier versions it was possible for players to join the AI team in Multi-Player Instant matches using a client ivar. This allowed the player to fight under the command of the AI in the same way as they could in Instant Action at the time. This was occasionally used maliciously but was more commonly done for amusement, as a form of trolling, or to balance the match. Editor Access in Multiplayer : Launching the game with the /edit Command Line Parameter allows the user to access the editor without the associated console command. Prior to 1.3 it was possible to use the editor in multiplayer by launching the game in this state, a bug which could be exploited to make changes to the map before other players joined. This could be used to grant the host an unfair advantage through placing additional weapon crates in obscure locations or adding units and buildings, but was also done as a quick way of creating a different environment for play and to use multiplayer maps as a base for new creations. Free Modified Ships : By ordering an unmodified ship and using the factory console to upgrade it during its production it was possible to produce a modified craft without incurring the additional scrap cost associated with the upgrade. Exploitation of this bug in was common, but it was used so widely that this was not seen as unfair by the majority of players and was accepted into standard strategy. The exploit's impact was minimal when a team had a large enough scrap flow, so it was seen as a way for commanders to push back from a poor position; it was also impossible to perform unless the commander stayed remained nearby to access the console during production and reset it to default loadouts afterward. Impossible Weapon Combinations : Through manipulation of the control.factory.weapon Console Command it was possible to modify the unit currently selected in the factory interface without being restricted by the available weapon harpoints in both single- and multi-player environments. Exploitation of this was very rare and often humerous, used to grant weapons of no real practical use or absurdly inappropriate for the unit they were applied to.Weapon hacking in PB6 by Vearie on YouTubePB6 hacking fun by Vearie on YouTube Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs Bugs The Nintendo 64 version of Batlezone is generally much more stable than the PC counterpart as it was built in a brand new engine with no top-down RTS component, but it is not without bugs of its own. Strategy Scoring : Rise of the Black Dogs' strategy gamemode, which differs significantly from that in any other installment, suffers from a scoring bug which stacks the game heavily against Player 2; all points granted points for bot deaths go to Player 1 and Player 2 can only score from the deaths of the opposing player, so Player 1 must die at least four times for Player 2 to win (whereas Player 2 need not die at all for Player 1 to win). References